Author: Scott William Carter

The Point of Unplugging: It’s Not About the Technology

Casey N. Cep’s article, “The Pointlessness of Unplugging,” published a few months ago over at the New Yorker, is well worth a read for those of us who make an effort to occasionally disengage from what I call the Great and Powerful Hive Mind. From her conclusion:

That is why, I think, the Day of Unplugging is such a strange thing. Those who unplug have every intention of plugging back in. This sort of stunt presents an experiment, with its results determined beforehand; one finds exactly what one expects to find: never more, often less …If it takes unplugging to learn how better to live plugged in, so be it. But let’s not mistake such experiments in asceticism for a sustainable way of life. For most of us, the modern world is full of gadgets and electronics, and we’d do better to reflect on how we can live there than to pretend we can live elsewhere.

I confess I’d never even heard of the “Day of Unplugging” until this article, which either says something about how little known the movement is or how disconnected I am from it.  Maybe both.  Here’s the thing, though: While Cep mades some good points, I think she misses what unplugging, for most of us, is all about. It’s not about the technology.  It’s about disengaging from the hyper-connected information sphere.  It’s the modern equivalent of the introvert just wanting to be by himself— to be alone with his  own thoughts, to take some solace from the silence (even mental silence is a kind of silence), to find some inner peace away from all the digital noise.

For many of us, information overload, especially of the ephemeral “I had a donut this morning” and “I haz cats”  variety, can eventually be toxic.  You are what you eat.  You are also what you put into your mind. I took a two-year break from social media before realizing that I was being silly doing so, that I never really had a problem with social media, and I especially had no problem with technology (which, at its core, is a word that just means tools that make our lives better).  I just needed to find the right balance.  I agree that the person who makes a big show out of unplugging may be a bit of an exhibitionist, just another way to say “Look at me!,” but that’s not why I do it.  I do it because disengaging from everyone else, and the Internet in general, is a way of engaging fully with me.

The struggle for most of us is not whether to unplug.  It’s how. I’ve worked hard to completely unplug from the Internet while in my home, which works for me because of the circumstances of my life, but even that’s been a challenge lately because of how embedded the Internet is in everything I do now.  Do I tell myself it’s okay to look up the weather online, but that I can’t go on Twitter?  Do I avoid reading CNN.com, but allow myself to use Google Maps to get directions?  It’s not as clear cut as it used to be.

What I have found is that if I commit as much as possible to unplugging while in my home, then I tend to have a list of things to do when I permit myself to get back online. But it’s still not easy.  I’m still trying to find the right balance, and I suspect that most people taking part in the “Day of Unplugging” are the same. I just do it daily instead of once a year.

New Book Published: THE LOVELY WICKED RAIN

It’s been far too long, but The Lovely Wicked Rain, the third in my Garrison Gage mystery series, is finally out in the world.  It was a lot of fun to spend a little time with Gage again, and I’m hoping my readers agree.  A little more information about the book is below.  These are standalone mysteries, so you don’t necessarily need to read the first two before reading this one, but they are books heavy on character, with an extended cast that return from book to book, so if you want to start from the first book, check out the Garrison Gage page on this site for more information.

 

The-Lovely-Wicked-Rain---Ebook-Cover-finalEbook:
Amazon | B&N |Kobo | iBooks

Paperback:
Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

(More links to retailers coming soon.)

Genre: Fiction | Mystery

A troubled young man.
A murder that shocks the town.
Buried secrets exposed to the world.

*****

They find him on the beach, shooting bullets into the sand. 

His name? Jeremiah Cooper, the son of the bullheaded high school football coach. Slight of build, soft of voice, he’s got all kinds of torment lurking behind his eyes. But despite Garrison Gage’s best efforts, he can’t pull the kid out of his shell. Then someone turns up dead at the local community college, and Jeremiah’s fragile world shatters.

Add a crisis in Gage’s good friend’s life, an ongoing feud with his adopted daughter about her life choices, and a hauntingly beautiful FBI agent with secrets of her own, and it’s a lot more drama than a half-retired private investigator with a bum knee wanted. Whatever happened to quiet rainy nights sipping bourbon, watching the sun sink beneath the waves on the Oregon coast, and trying to think of a ten-letter word that means grumpy and glad about it?

But before Gage can even write the word curmudgeon, he’s pulled deeper into Jeremiah’s world–a world of sex, secrets, and a sadistic evil that preys on human weakness.

Read the First Chapter Online.

The Garrison Gage Mysteries (in chronological order):

  • The Gray and Guilty Sea
  • A Desperate Place for Dying
  • The Lovely Wicked Rain 

All The Ways to Find Success as a Writer Start With Thinking for Yourself

Over at The Passive Voice, there’s a great post titled, “Indie Authors Quitting Their Day Jobs” that’s worth a read:

If you care to contribute such anecdotal evidence in comments to this post, please do.

If you think it’s your private business, don’t be offended. Just don’t post anything.

Feel free to post anonymously or under an online pen name if you like. If someone points out a trollish comment, PG will probably delete the comment when he gets around to it.

If you’re a writer, or simply a reader who’s interested in the many ways writers have found success outside of traditional publishing, read all the comments. Very inspiring stuff.

choiceAnd I want to add something here, something I’ve been wanting to get off my chest for a while. As you can see from the comments, there are lots of ways to skin this cat.  We’re four or five years into this “indie publishing revolution” now, depending on how you measure it, long enough that some of things that I advocated to writers a couple years ago, both at workshops and online, I wouldn’t advocate today. I know of writers who have done well since then, and others who are bitter that things didn’t go as well as they’d hoped — and some of these bitter folks direct their anger at the people who were trying to help them. Why? Because whatever technique or method or approach that was advocated didn’t work for them. Therefore all of that advice is suspect.

Oh really? It’s not weakness to change your mind; it means you’re adaptable, capable of changing your approach to fit the reality on the ground. And reality can change.  One of the greatest dangers when you teach others, especially if you have a voice that leans toward the dogmatic (and sometimes you have to be dogmatic to break through people’s mental barriers), is that people will take what you say as gospel.  As rules to be followed to the letter, rather than suggestions to take into account.  As a formula to be copied, rather than a method to be studied to see if it might work for you.

Because here’s the only truth I know about this crazy business of stringing words together and selling them for money. All the ways to find success as a writer start with thinking for yourself.

There are people who have success in every genre—romance, fantasy, mystery, you name it. There are writers who are extremely prolific, following the “make a little on a lot” approach, the same approach that traditional publishing uses, and there are writers who make a lot on a little, using aggressive and frequent discounting and tested visibility techniques to boost their sales. To be dismissive of either approach is only an admission on your part that you are letting your biases get in the way of your learning.

DCF 1.0There are writers who publish only with Amazon, taking advantage of the promotional tools available to people who publish exclusively with them, and writers who think it’s better to cast a wider net, publishing everywhere and in every format.  There are writers who only work with traditional publishers, writers who are indie-only, and hybrid writers who do a little of both. There are writers who say never write to market, just write what’s in your heart and don’t chase trends.  And yet I just read about a guy who hit 1000 sales in one day by repeatedly targeting the market, specializing in 15-20K word serials; he does three, and if it takes off, he does more, and if not, he moves onto something else.

And it’s working for him, because he’s thinking for himself.

There are writers who hit a goldmine with one of their first books. There are writers who still scrape out a subsistence existence after a 100 titles— but would rather do that than even take on a part-time job. There are writers who bag groceries, bar tend, or other dead end gigs, to preserve their creative energy for what they love most, and other writers, like me, who made the decision to commit fully to two careers because I get tremendous value from both. That’s another thing I changed my mind on, by the way.  Because I had to change my goals to fit both my evolving needs and the circumstances of my life.

I’ve received a lot of great advice over the years.  Some I followed.  Much of it I thought about, then discarded—even if it came from people I admired.  I’m guessing that just about all the writers in that comment section at The Passive Voice have done the same.  They didn’t copy anyone. They didn’t blame anyone when things were going poorly any more than they would give someone else all the credit when things were going well.

This truth doesn’t just apply to writing, of course. It applies to achieving success in anything in life. Learn from everything and everyone—but in the end, think for yourself and find your own way.

The irony, of course, is that it is the only way.